Government spokesmen do not lie...much (Feb. 5 column)

Is it stupidity…or just plain lying?

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            As I write these immortal words, the wind is howling outside and the snow is up to our upstairs windows. School is cancelled everywhere and the ditches are decorated with Mazdas and Fords – not Rob Ford, but useful Fords.

            Why do we put up with this kind of behaviour from the weathermen and shapely weatherwomen? (I’ve been watching the Weather Channel.) Why do we not all move to Costa Rica where everyone is rich and the sun shines all the time except at night when there is a little shower to make the gardens grow?

            I have a cold and I have cabin fever, even though our estate is considerably larger than a cabin. The last time I saw a snowplough was yesterday and I have a sneaking feeling that those government cutbacks in the snowploughing budget are now taking effect, although I have never seen a government cutback yet that resulted in a reduction of service. I’m sure you recognize sarcasm.

            Don’t you love those announcements from our beloved politicians? “Yes, we are closing 29 government facilities and laying off 582 workers, but this will not result in a reduction of service.” Of course there are only two choices if one were to describe the person making the announcement: stupid or lying, but I suppose, in a pinch, he or she could be both.

            I recall back in the early 1990s, when the federal government, under the stage name ‘Canada Post’, was closing post offices all over Canada – in Aroostook for example – and in each case insisting there wouldn’t be any reduction in service. Hmmmm…let’s say I lived in Aroostook and could walk to the post office to mail a parcel. Next day I have to drive to Perth. Reduction in service? Not at all, duh, you can still mail your parcel, can’t you?

            What brought on this rant was my daily newspaper’s headline on January 23: “Horizon Cuts Radiology Jobs”. Our old friend Horizon Health was eliminating 12 positions, only eight of which had actually been filled at the time. This, according to the HH bureaucrat who announced these job cuts in the X-ray departments, was going to save $500,000 annually, and was “not going to have a detrimental effect on wait times” and in fact would “streamline” things. Do they never get tired of uttering this drivel?

            Stupid or lying. Take your pick.

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            Another newspaper report I was particularly struck by was one that didn’t involve government spokesmen, and I was pleased for the break. A story that came from the Canadian Press was reporting on a survey or poll that asked people how much money they need to have saved before they can retire comfortably.

            People in my tax bracket said they would be happy to have a dollar seventy-five and VISA payments of less than $100 a month, plus a low rent payment, plus the ownership of a car less than ten years old. While they said retiring to Florida was out of the question, perhaps south central Mexico (away from the tourist areas) might be possible if they laid off the tequila and kept the scorpion bites to a minimum.

            As the poll went up the ladder, people now making more than $30,000 a year thought they needed liquid assets of $200,000 to retire – if they had a pension – and that would be to the warm climes of Maine.

            What astounded me was that ‘average Canadians’ – and none of us will admit to being average – thought they needed $908,000 in investments to be able to retire. If they owned (free and clear as they say) a house in Vancouver, for example, they could retire as soon as they sold it. A bungalow on Davie Street would sell for $907,999 and the owner could find that other dollar on the sidewalk.

            Now we come to the ‘affluent’ Canadians. These are people whose annual income was in the $400,000-plus range. These folks felt that they needed assets and investments totalling $2.3 MILLION plus pensions in order to retire comfortably.

            I think I would have to look carefully at the word ‘comfortably’. Would they eat Vector cereal for breakfast at $7.50 a box, or Rice Krispies at $4.00? Would they have to drive a Lexus instead of a Taurus? Would they have to live in a penthouse over the Legion and drink only the finest wines? Why would anyone possibly need that much money just to retire and take a pension?

            Just before I started writing this column, I gave ‘cabin fever’ a good kick by going  uptown to buy a lottery ticket. The top prize is $2.5 million and I intend to win, this time. Never mind that, since the mid-1970s when I started buying lottery tickets, I have won the grand total of $156; I plan to win this lottery. The question is, what will I do with that extra $200,000?

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There's talk about legalizing Mary Jane (Jan. 29 column)

It’s easy to see I need a hobby

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            At times I don’t have enough to do.

            Sitting in my favourite and most comfortable chair and sipping on a toddy of hot chocolate, lemonade and puréed blueberries, I started imagining what things would sound like if a person from 1968 (George) had a conversation with a person from 2014 (Cody).

            George: You know, I haven’t listened to my 8-track for at least a week…

            Cody: What?

            George: My 8-track, I said I hadn’t listened to it for a week. Are you deaf?

            Cody: That’s not politically correct you know, to say ‘deaf’. It’s hearing impaired. You don’t want to insult people do you?

            George: You mean deaf people would be insulted if I said they were deaf? They wouldn't hear me, would they?

            Cody: That’s right, and you must not use words like crippled, and be a little more sensitive about smoking around non-smokers.

            George: (Lighting an Export A cigarette) What’s wrong with smoking? Next thing you know, people won’t want you to smoke in their houses. Crazy! You people in 2014 sure are nutcakes. I would get my camera and take a picture of all the no smoking signs, but I’m all out of film.

            Cody: What’s film? Well, anyway, I hate to end this fascinating conversation, but I’m going out to look at new cars. The warranty is running out on our Toyota and we have to get a new one. The salesperson is waiting.

            George: How much do cars cost for you guys in 2014? Inflation’s taking hold here in 1968 and the price of a new Impala is up to $3200…what’s a Toyota? What's a warranty?

            Cody: Thirty-two hundred dollars? That wouldn’t buy the ashtray on a new full-size Chevvy. A bottom of the line Toyota car is $18,000 and if you want to get a hybrid or something like that, you’re talking over $30,000. A pickup truck – here’s a photo – is forty or fifty thousand.

            George: Dollars?

            Cody: Dollars. And if you parked one of today’s trucks alongside a truck you might drive in 1968 it would be three times as big.

            George: Yeah, but it would carry three times the load on the back. Wouldn’t it?

            Cody: It would not. So-called pickup trucks today – big as a gravel truck was in 1968 – have about two thirds the cargo space of my old 1971 GMC halfton. By the way, nobody does their own mechanic work in 2014. We have to take our cars and trucks to ‘automotive technicians’. The last mechanic work I did was putting windshield washer fluid in the tank by the motor. At least I think that was a motor; it’s all covered.

            George: Where did the mechanics all go? Are there still plumbers and carpenters? I suppose there’s a different name for electricians now. I’ll tell you something: If I was Chairman of the world, I –

            Cody: We don’t say chairman any more. It’s chairperson or just ‘chair’. We talk to furniture now and still think we’re sane. I got an email the other day “From the desk of so-and-so…”

            George: Whadya mean, he-male?

            Cody: No, it’s EMAIL. I write a letter on my computer keyboard and a second later my cousin in Vancouver reads it. I know, you’re thinking all I have to do is pick up my cellphone or if I wanted I could text her. I don’t –

            George: Are you saying you’re in jail? They let you have a phone in your cell? And what’s that you said about sexing your cousin over the phone? No wonder you’re in jail. It’s a gay life you lead there in 2014.

            Cody: Ahem…George, the word ‘gay’ has a different meaning now than it did in 1968; a lot of things are different. People pay extra for groceries that have Omega 3 in them, or probiotics, the price of gas is up to $1.30 –

            George: A dollar thirty a gallon! What kind of a salary do you make – when you’re not in jail - to afford that? And what’s Omega 3? A spaceship? Next you’ll be telling me that banks charge the customers for keeping their money even though the banks invest that money and make interest. I worked in a bank in Hamilton, so I know about banks.

            Cody: Let’s go back to the price of gas, George. It’s $1.30 a LITRE. So that would be…let me see, multiply by 4.55, subtract 27, take the square root of 91 and that would be…a lot. (I’m better at geography than math.) And banks, well they charge you for even breathing in their branch, mainly because they take the cost of oxygen out of the tellers’ salaries. And if it’s cold outside, say minus 20 Celsius, They charge –

            George: What kind of an animal is a Celsius? Is it like one of them little naugas that people make naugahyde furniture out of?

            Cody: (After checking a text message on his cellphone) I better get going, George. I’d call the Toyota place, but I’m running out of daytime minutes. Bye now.

            George: (To himself) I think I’ll stay here in the Sixties. There’s talk about legalizing marijuana.

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A good way to use up extra gasoline (Jan. 22 column)

Flug did NOT demonstrate fuel efficiency

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            There is a certain amount of embarrassment around the Flug household this weekend. On Friday morning he filled his Mazda with gas and got up Saturday morning to find that the tank was dry as a bone.

            He called the police to report that someone had siphoned out his gas and they arrived within hours to make out their report. The officers said that they would let him know if they found his gasoline somewhere. So I drove Flug down to Muniac Store where he bought forty litres of the best in a red plastic jug

            Once that was in the Mazda’s tank, Flug pulled out his key and pushed a button. The car started as if by magic. “So you got one a them remote starters,” I said, and thought I had made a fairly intelligent statement. I never claimed to be brilliant.

            He looked at me as if he were going to make a sarcastic comment, but must have remembered who had just driven him to pick up the gas. “Yeah, I got it put in last year so I don’t have to go outside to start the car.”

            “So are you able to send the car uptown and pick up groceries while you watch the Manchester United game?” I asked. Yours truly is no mean hand at sarcasm, even though he hadn’t used any on me. Then I remembered something I had wanted to ask him: “You must have gotten home late from the club last evening,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it when I had to get up and let out the dog at 3:00 am and your car was running. You must have been listening to the radio or something.”

            “No, it must have been somebody along the road,” he said. “I was in bed and asleep by midnight. Threw my keys on the table and headed for bed.”

            As an avid reader of mystery novels, I think I have provided all the facts to explain where Flug’s gasoline went Friday night. I should say it’s now up to the reader of this column to figure it out, but I’m not that cruel (don’t listen to my wife on that subject).

            The first clue: he THREW his car keys on the table. Second: on his key is a button that remotely starts his Mazda. Third: At 3:00 am I heard his car running in his driveway, and fourth: his car was dry of gas the next morning when he arose to face the day. You can see why I used the word ‘embarrassment’. Flug had figured it out himself. I just hope the police don’t corner a suspect they think was a gas thief and taser him or make him listen to Celine Dion for three hours.

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            In the remains (as my Aunt Bessie would say) of this column I shall check my notebook for wise, indeed brilliant, statements and suggestions, but then will probably just go back to my usual.

            As I was grocery shopping last week, I met a woman I haven’t seen for quite a few years. We talked for a while, and as she turned to head for the canned vegetables section she said – just as the church minister went by with the local priest: “Do you want to tweet me?” I suppose they will understand, eventually, but they looked shocked.

            At a recent community event, Flug was talking to Eddie Flagon, who works for an area company that makes kitchen cupboards and such things. He introduced me to Eddie, whom I recognized as one who sometimes also works as a lay minister, filling in when ministers can’t get to an event. I almost said, but refrained from doing it by the skin of my teeth: “So you’re a cabinet minister?”

            Elroy Fibbret, bartender at the Kincardine Bar & Grill, was telling us the other evening that he owned a cockatoo named Bozo whom (or which) he had taught to draw simple figures like a horse or cow. He said he was still training the cockatoo to hold a brush in his talons while standing on one foot. Elroy looked at his watch and said it was already time for another lesson. “Back to the drawing bird,” he said, just before we killed him.

            Would anyone like to know whose name I am extremely tired of hearing? Justin Bieber. Apparently he’s a ‘teenage heart-throb’ which must mean that the people we used to call ‘teenyboppers’ find him irresistible. Some people like anchovies too. I will say one thing about him though: what he presents can reasonably be called music, whereas ‘rap’ and ‘hip-hop’ can only be called…something else. I think that one of these days, those who like R and H-H are going to be listening to that monotonous stuff and ask themselves: “What? I used to like this garbage? I’ll bet I was even a Leafs fan.”

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Avoiding talking about the weather (Jan. 15 column)

Starting 2014 without an idea

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Flug really takes this ‘New year’s Resolution’ business seriously, and I mean seriously.

            (I just slipped in to my office for a minute to write that first sentence and remind myself to write on the matter once he leaves. He’s in the living room at the moment, still foaming at the mouth about telemarketers – or it could be the lemonade he’s imbibing.)

            Later…He finally went home and I’m somewhat the poorer, now being bereft of lemonade until Monday morning. I know it’s Canada and not the country to the south, but he was in a state anyway and it was all about the three – THREE – telemarketing calls he had received before 11:00 that morning.

            “I think Megan of Cardholder Services and I are going steady now,” he moaned. “And Achmed of Credit Cards America is getting to be a case of diarrhoea. Why don’t these people leave me alone? I swear at them and insult their ancestors, but they just keep calling, and they won’t answer any questions I ask them.”

            “The clue is,” I said, “when there’s a pause after you answer the phone, that’s a computer talking to you. I immediately hang up. Have you tried putting your name on a ‘no-call’ list?”

He said he had done that three times. “And guess what?” he said, not really wanting me to guess. “I read in the newspaper that one of those big no-call lists had just sold all their phone numbers to a telemarketer for a million dollars.”

            It’s a mystery wrapped up in an enigma, that’s for sure. You probably started reading this with the idea that I would suggest some way to deal with these ‘people’, meaning computers, but not only am if bereft of lemonade, I am bereft of ideas. But then, you knew that already.

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            Although I try – but not very hard – to avoid talking about the weather, I have to say this is the worst winter weather we’ve had for years. Since 2007 according to John McSheffery. I just needed to say that and remind our politicians that 2014 is an election year, so let’s get out there and smarten up.

            I was sitting at the club last evening and talking to the three Felkoy twins about those two subjects – weather and politics – when who should come in for a hot chocolate and olive sandwich but my old friend Oscar Hammond, the inventor of the Hammond Organ.

            “Come on in and sit down, you old horse thief,” Flug bellowed. “We were just saying that we wished you would come in, because we have a question we’d like to ask you.” It must have been late in the evening, because I didn’t remember mentioning Oscar’s name at all.

            “We know you invented the electric organ,” said Flug, “but the question we’ve been pondering is, did you ever lend your name to a type of breakfast?” None of us knew what Flug was spouting off about, but we let him ramble. It turned out he was wanting to start 2014 by pun-ishing us all.

            “Is it true that the breakfast dish ‘Hammond eggs’ was named after you?”

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            My nephew Dishdrie was getting quite exasperating on Christmas Day. He kept repeating the song from a beer commercial he had heard on Sportsnet. After he had sung this refrain about 231 times, I asked him to refrain from the refrain. “Quite right,” said Flug, “I would prefer the ‘I am Canadian’ song or poem about another kind of beer.”

            “I don’t want to hear any beer commercial,” I said. “I don’t want to hear ANY commercial, even if it involves shapely Swedish models…Well, maybe shapely Swedish models, but certainly not beer.”

            “You sound like a broken record,” said Dishdrie’s mother who is also my sister. “It’s over and over…”

I noticed he had a mulish, baffled look on his alleged face. “What do you mean, ‘like a broken record’?” he asked, and I realized he was only nineteen, barely old enough to remember Windows 3.1 that Bill Gates introduced in the early 1990s.

            I explained what a record was, and how when a scratch appeared on one of the old 45 rpm records it tended to skip past that point and repeat itself. “For example,” I said, “on the Hank Williams song ‘Mansion on the Hill’ old Hank – the real Hank, not Hank Jr. – would sing: “Tonight, down here…tonight, down here…tonight down here…tonight down here…” and it might go on forever unless someone stopped the thing.”

            “Who’s Hank Williams?” asked Dishdrie. It was then I threw him out into a snowbank. Anyone who doesn’t know who Hank Williams is must be a terrorist, or at least a Communist. Send him away.

            Before I close this column, I should explain about ‘the three Felkoy twins’. Those of us good in math realize that a set of twins usually includes only two, but you see, there are two sets of Felkoy twins, and Allan’s twin brother Albert is in Whitecourt, Alberta at the moment.

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